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This program explores how the film noir genre, which reached its peak in the 1950s, reflected the pessimism and paranoia that were signs of the times. With its roots in German expressionism and its disturbing sense of corruption and urban decay these "black films" were a mirror of the American psyche. 55 min. DVD 371; vhs Video/C 3715

Violent America: The Movies, 1946-1964. New York, Museum of Modern Art; distributed by New York Graphic Society, Greenwich, Conn. [1971]

Main Stack PN1993.5.U6.A84

Arthur, Paul.

"The Gun in the Briefcase: Or, the Inscription of Class in Film Noir." The Hidden Foundation: Cinema and the Question of Class. Edited by David E. James and Rick Berg. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, c1996. pp: 90-113.

Contents: Gestapo in America : Confessions of a Nazi spy and Stranger on the third floor -- White-collar murder : Double indemnity -- Cuba, gangsters, vets, and other outcasts of the islands : The chase and Key Largo -- North from Mexico : Border incident, Hold back the dawn, Secret beyond the door, and Out of the past -- Bad boy patriots : This gun for hire, Ride the pink horse, and Pickup on South Street.

Contents: The 39 steps -- Maugham, Ambler, and Greene -- On the air, on the screen, and in word-balloons -- McCarthy, television, and film noir -- "Cloak and swagger" -- From George Smiley to Bernard Sampson -- The Cold War inside out -- From the "evil empire" to "the great Satan" -- Big screen pyrotechnics and eyes in the sky -- More fact than fiction.

Broe, Dennis.

Film noir, American workers, and postwar Hollywood / Dennis Broe ; foreword by Richard Greenwald and
Gainesville : University Press of Florida, c2009.

"Politics and mythology of film art: the noir era."In: Radical Hollywood: the untold story behind America's favorite movies / Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner. New York: New Press, 2002.

Main Stack PN1995.9.P6.B84 2002

Buss, Robin.

French Film Noir / Robin Buss. London; New York; M. Boyars, 1994.

UCB Main PN1995.9.F54 B87 1994

UCB Moffitt PN1995.9.F54 B87 1994

Butler, David

Jazz noir: listening to music from Phantom lady to The last seduction Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002.

MAIN: PN1995.9.J37 B88 2002

Chopra-Gant, Mike.

Hollywood genres and postwar America : masculinity, family and nation in popular movies and film noir
London ; New York : I.B. Tauris Pub. ; New York : Distributed in the U.S. by Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

"The noir East: Hong Kong's transmutation of a Hollywood Genre?" In: Hong Kong film, Hollywood and the new global cinema : no film is an island / edited by Gina Marchetti and Tan See Kam. London ; New York : Routledge, 2007.

Main Stack PN1993.5.C4.H66 2007

Conley, Tom

"Noir in the Red and the Nineties in the Black." In: Film genre 2000: new critical essays / edited by Wheeler Winston Dixon. pp: 193-210 Albany: State University of New York Press, c2000. Series title: The SUNY series, cultural studies in cinema/video.

Main Stack PN1995 .F45787 2000

Corber, Robert J.

Homosexuality in Cold War America: Resistance and the Crisis of Masculinity / Robert J. Corber. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997. Series title: New Americanists.

Running Away From Myself; A Dream Portrait of America Drawn From the Films of the Forties. New York, Grossman, 1969.

Main Stack PN1993.5.U6.D4

Desser, David

"The wartime films of John Huston: film noir and the emergence of the therapeutic." In: Reflections in a male eye: John Huston and the American experience / edited by Gaylyn Studlar and David Desser. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, c1993.

Main Stack PN1998.3.H87.R44 1993

Moffitt PN1998.3.H87.R44 1993

Dickos, Andrew

Street with no name: a history of the classic American film noir / Andrew Dickos. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, c2002.

"The epistemology of race and Black American film noir: Spike Lee's Summer of Sam as lynching parable."
In: Film and knowledge: essays on the integration of images and ideas / edited by Kevin L. Stoehr.
Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, c2002.

Main Stack PN1994.S8176 2002

PFA PN1994.F4255 2002

Critical race theorists Charles Mills, Lewis Gordon, and David Theo Goldberg have sketched an epistemology of racialized thinking such that whiteness is characterized as a cognitive blindness with respect to the moral. Not knowing the relevant moral facts due to white privilege thus obscures knowing what the proper moral action is. The essay argues that, similarly, Spike Lee's film noir-influenced Summer of Sam critiques a group of young white men whose fear of difference prevents them from recognizing the relevant moral facts. The film thus performs philosophical work by broadening criticisms of race to include analyzing fear of difference.

"The arc of national confidence and the birth of film noir, 1929-41." In:
This side of despair : how the movies and American life intersected during the Great Depression / Philip Hanson.
Madison [NJ] : Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, c2008.

"Woman's place: the absent family of film noir." In: Movies and mass culture / edited and with an introduction by John Belton. p. 171-82. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, c1996. Rutgers depth of field series.

"From Picaro to Private Eye: The Outsider's Literary Mutations as Anti-Hero from 16th Century Rogue to 20th Century Hard-Boiled/NOIR Detective." The image of the outsider in literature, media, and society : selected papers / edited by Will Wrigh
Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery. Conference (12th : 2002 : Colorado Springs, Colo.)
Pueblo, Colo. : Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery, [2002]

Main (Gardner) Stacks PN56.5.O95 S63 2002

Irwin, John T.

Unless the threat of death is behind them : hard-boiled fiction and film noir.
Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

The Fatal Woman: Sources of Male Anxiety in American Film Noir, 1941-1991. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses, c1996.

UCB Main PN1995.9.F44 M38 1996

May, Lary.

" "Outside the groove of history": film noir and the birth of a counterculture." In: The Big tomorrow: Hollywood and the politics of the American way / Lary May. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, c2000.

"Evidence for a British film noir cycle." In: Re-viewing British cinema, 1900-1992: essays and interviews / edited by Wheeler Winston Dixon. p. 155-64. Albany: State University of New York Press, c1994.

"Hard Boilded and Soft Bellied: The Fat Heavy in Film Noir." In: Screening genders / edited and with an introduction by Krin Gabbard and William Luhr.
New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, c2008

Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1995.9.S47 S37 2008

Moffitt PN1995.9.S47 S37 2008

Muller, Eddie.

The art of noir: the posters and graphics from the classic era of film noir Woodstock: Overlook Press, 2002.

"The Un-American Film Art: Robert Siodmak, Fritz Lang, and the Significance of Film Noir's German Connection." In: Public enemies, public heroes : screening the gangster from Little Caesar to Touch of Evil
Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1999.

MAIN: PN1995.9.G3 M86 1999

MOFF: PN1995.9.G3 M86 1999

Naremore, James.

More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts / James Naremore. Updated and expanded ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008

"Night and fog : from German expressionism to film noir." In:
Modernist America : art, music, movies, and the globalization of American culture / Richard Pells.
New Haven : Yale University Press, c2011.

"The "popular First Amendment" and classical Hollywood, 1930-1960: film noir and "speech theory for the millions"." In: Freeing the First Amendment: critical perspectives on freedom of expression / edited by David S. Allen and Robert Jensen. New York: New York University Press, c1995.

The author investigates the alienation expressed by film noir, pinpointing its motivation in the conflict between desires for escape, autonomy and freedom. This survey examines how film noir reflected radical changes in the physical and social landscapes of postwar America, defining the genre's contribution to the eternal debate between the values of individualism and community

"Lounge Time: Postwar Crises and the Chronotope of Film Noir." In: Refiguring American Film Genres: History and Theory / Nick Browne, editor. pp: 129-70 Berkeley: University of California Press, c1998.

"Noir Narration." In: Post-war cinema and modernity : a film reader / edited by John Orr and Olga Taxidou.
New York, NY : New York University Press, 2001.

Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1994 .P6567 2001

Pacific Film Archive PN1994 .P6567 2001

Telotte, J. P.

"The woman in the door: framing presence in film noir." In: In the eye of the beholder: critical perspectives in popular film and television / edited by Gary R. Edgerton, et al. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, c1997.

Main Stack PN1995.I565 1997

Moffitt PN1995.I565 1997

Telotte, J. P.

Voices in the Dark: The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir / J.P. Telotte. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, c1989.

"A common vision? : traces of noir in Nabokov's Russian fiction and American writing of the 1930s." In: Nabokov at the movies : film perspectives in fiction Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Company, c2003.

Main Stack PG3476.N3.Z95 2003

PFA PN1995.3.W94 2003

Contnets: Nabokov and film : positive versus negative -- The impact of German and Soviet film on Nabokov's early Russian fiction -- A medium invaded : cinema and cinematics in The Great Gatsby, King, queen, knave, and Laughter in the dark -- A common vision? : traces of noir in Nabokov's Russian fiction and American writing of the 1930s -- Images of terror and desire : Lolita and the American cinematic experience, 1939-1952 -- Dream distortions : film and visual deceit in The assistant producer, Bend sinister, and Ada -- Altered perspectives and visual disruption in Transparent things and American film of the early 1970s -- Shimmers on a screen : cinematic hyperreality in recent American fiction and film.

"Los Angeles constitutes the very locus, spiritual font, and often the actual site of some of America's most cherished crime-movie fantasies. This is despite the fact that it is a city devoid of the topographical symbols and embedding of the past usually associated with detective narratives, especially film noir detective narratives. The writer examines what detective movies, from the postwar period to present day, have done with the ecology of L.A. and what L.A. has done with and to detective movies." [Art Abstracts]

Avila, E.

"Popular culture in the age of white flight: Film noir, Disneyland, and the cold war (sub)urban imaginary." Journal of Urban History, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 3-22, 2004

"This article takes popular cultural expressions as a window onto the transformation of the American city after World War II. First, it considers the film genre known as film noir as evidence of a larger perception of social disorder that ensued within the context of the centralized, modern city, which peaked at the turn of the century. Second, it turns to Disneyland as the archetypal example of a postwar suburban order, one that promised to deliver a respite from the racial and sexual upheaval that characterized the culture of industrial urbanism. Together, film noir and Disneyland illuminate the meanings assigned to the structural transformation of the mid-century American city and reveal the cultural underpinnings of a grass-roots conservatism that prized white suburban home ownership. Ultimately, this article emphasizes the interplay of structure and culture, demonstrating the linkage between how cities are imagined and how they are made." [Communications Abstracts]

"Part of a special section devoted to man-made modular megastructures. The film noir produced by Hollywood between 1941 and 1958 presented the image of a mental megalopolis. Hollywood's entertainment of urban audiences was often paradoxical, creating a negative counterpoint to modern life. This was especially so in film noir, a morbid melodrama reminding audiences of the dark side of prosperity and which contrasted with the big-budget Hollywood celebration of the American way. The writer goes on to discuss examples from film noir, the "neo-noir" revival that began in the mid-1970s, and the present day." [Art Index]

"Noir, the city and a steamy night." (author Nicholas Christopher of "Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City) (Living Arts Pages) New York Times v146 (Wed, July 9, 1997):B1(N), C11(L), col 1, 39 col in.

Boozer, Jack

"The Lethal Femme Fatale in the Noir Tradition." Journal of film and video. 51, no. 3-4, (Fall 1999): 20
UCB users only

" The current crop of motion pictures in the film noir genre suchas McNaughton's "Wild Things" and Siberling's "City of Angels" fail to grab the viewer's attention due to weak plots. The films fail to supply enough dramatic or moral contexts with which to ground the action." [Expanded Academic Index]

"Dark Limbo: Film noir and the North American borders." Journal of American Culture 29.2 (June 2006): 125(14).
UC users only

"Film noir is a heterogeneous group of 1940s and 1950s Hollywood films identified by a set of basic cinematic conventions that defy Classical Hollywood's narrative, discursive, and stylistic paradigms. Director John Sturges' film, 'Jeopardy (1953)' displays the barren Mexican borderlands and uses the border as a narrative and visual device to signal physical and symbolic transition." [Expanded Academic Index]

"The article uses Stanley Cavell's claim that tragedy be thought of in terms of avoiding recognition of the other as a way to discuss a genre - film noir - which is usually ignored by tragic theorists. A close reading of Billy Wilders classic film Double Indemnity serves to present a way to think tragedy not just as a narrowly defined dramatic genre, but as a mode or structure of feeling, with the femme fatale as a particularly resilient contemporary example of tragic sensibility. For in the world of film noir she elicits fantasies of omnipotence, supporthing the hero's desire to stave off knowledge of his own fallibility at all costs. At the same time she performs a tragic acceptance precisely by assuming responsibility for her fate, because she comes to discover freedom in her embrace of the inevitability of causation. This article thus claims the femme fatale is not merely a stereotype, symptom or catchphrase for dangerous femininity but rather the subject of her narrative, an authentic modern heroine." [Project Muse]

Castille, Philip Dubuisson

"Red Scare and Film Noir: The Hollywood Adaptation of Robert Penn Warrens's All the King's Men." The Southern Quarterly: A Journal of the Arts in the South vol. 33 no. 2-3, 1995 Winter-Spring

"African-American neo-noir discourse is a vital part of neo-noir studies, not just a marginalized addition. Born in the late 1960s and revised starting in the 1990s, black neo-noir, a series of mystery thrillers focusing on African-American detectives and police officers, has helped to revitalize the popular filmmaking discourse of film noir. Critical work on black neo-noir is both recent and sparse, resulting in, at best, a gap in noir criticism, and, at worst, indicating confusion about the significance of these films. As conceptual metaphors, African-American neo-noirs help represent and illustrate black experience, and constitute a semiotic terrain that merits the critical attention of the academy. By establishing where today's loose-knit genre of the African-American neo-noir comes from, critics can recognize that African-American films raise a host of complex political, social, and cultural questions in relation to film-noir discourse." [Art Index]

An essay is presented which discusses film noirs released between 1965 and 2007 and the role of a dangerous father to represent history of neo-noir. It offers a history on the development of film noir and its influences. It mentions that there were film noirs that examined crimes of fatherhood and father figures like the 1944 film "Double Indemnity." It argues that neo-noir films discern how dark obsessions of fathers destroy both the lives of their offspring and the communities they live in.\

"A note on film noir. Among the topics commented on are the classification of film noir, the low-key lighting in the films, the portrayal of women, and neo-noir such as John Boorman's Point Blank. A chronology of film noir from 1919 to 1997 is provided."

"Dashiell Hammett and Film Noir...Out of the Vase?" Monthly Film Bulletin, 49:576/587 (1982) p.November

"Down These Seen Streets a Man Must Go: Siegfried Kracauer, Hollywood's Terror Films and the Spatiality of Film Noir." New German Critique: An Interdisciplinary Journal of German Studies, vol. 89, pp. 113-43, Spring 2003.

"Beyond good and evil: the morality of thrillers." American Film v 6 July/Aug 1981. p. 49-52+

Dimendberg, Edward.

"Down These Seen Streets A Man Must Go: Siegfried Kracauer, Hollywood's Terror Films and the Spatiality of Film Noir." New German Critique: An Interdisciplinary Journal of German Studies. 89: 113-43. 2003 Spring-Summer.

"Film noir's response to capitalism in the United States is set in the fluorescent aisles of consumer culture. The era of classic film noir came to an end in the late 1950s, but in the New Hollywood of the early 1970s, filmmakers started to reassess American film genres and icons through the lens of a national culture transformed by the new social movements linked with the 1960s. As well as the more obvious political movements, a new wave of consumer advocacy emerged in the 1960s that challenged procedures in corporate marketing and production as manipulative and corrupt. The consumer culture associated with the supermarket, and particularly its relationship to the woman as shopper, was frequently described as a type of conspiracy or brainwashing. The writer discusses the way in which supermarkets and consumer culture are portrayed in the films Double Indemnity, The Long Goodbye, and Fight Club." [Art Index]

"This paper historicizes American cities after the Second World War through the rich motif of noir literature and film. But, in doing so, the paper is also a critical consideration of noir's work in urban studies. Noir has been drawn, often usefully but also unfortunately, away from its referents, from the terrain that it most directly summons but also from the spaces in which its contradictions are most apparent. Moving from a discussion of the distractions of Chinatown to contextual themes such as mobility and ruin, the paper links noir criticism and noir texts with broader debates in postwar urbanism and modernism. As just part of these discourses, noir not only is irreducible to certain essences, but can potentially perform the opposite role, challenging conventions of urban understanding and practice. The result would be a more detailed and subtle account of modernism's American geographies."

"Examines the development of film noir during the postwar period and how this new film genre was different from earlier, specifically gangster films in its treatment of crime, criminals, and guilt. The article discusses various theories about film noir and its treatment of moral responsibility and self-dissolution among ordinary citizens who are drawn into crime, a common and often essential characteristic of these films. Film noir, probably influenced by Sigmund Freud and the existentialist literature of Albert Camus and F?dor Dostoevski, simultaneously touched on the puzzle of subjectivity inherent in crime and murder and transformed self-dissolution into a fashionable, pleasurable, and "cool" experience for the viewer." [America: History and Life]

"A profile of cinematographer John Alton. Born in Austria in 1901, Alton worked in a variety of studios in America and abroad, before moving to Hollywood in 1939. His big break came in 1947, when, while working for the B-picture studio Republic, he first encountered director Anthony Mann. Their film T-Men (1948) was to be the first of a dozen pictures that together formed the epitome of the film noir style. In 1949, Alton published his groundbreaking book on the camera's role in filmmaking, Painting with Light, now a highly respected work in cinematography circles. He then went back to MGM, where he made some 34 films over the next ten years, including Father of the Bride and--his last film of note--Elmer Gantry (1960), before quitting the business in 1960. Despite the critical recognition that began to come his way in the following years, Alton remained a mysterious figure until the 1990s and the appearance of the cinematographic documentary Visions of Light, which included many striking examples of his work. He died on June 2, 1996, in Santa Monica, California, aged 94." [Art Abstracts]

The French creation of the notion 'film noir' and the evolvement of film criticism into an academic discipline caused film critics to assess such films more closely. As a result, a handful of B films were dramatically re-evaluated as masterworks. Among the most celebrated B films are three directed by Anthony Mann and filmed by cinematographer John Alton. These three are 'T-Men,' 'Raw Deal' and 'He Walked by Night.'.

"A discussion on film noir's femme fatale argues that these so-called bad women do not actually exist in films except as a feature of the gender fantasies that surround such characters. It contends that the femme fatales are shown to be trapped in societies that are presented as psychotically gendered, where an insistence on independence is often misconstrued as the mark of the lying, murdering femme fatale." [Expanded Academic Index]

"This article challenges recent scholarship on German exile directors by suggesting that the context of Weimar culture is relevant to understanding the work of these directors in Hollywood. I propose that film noir of the 1940s and 1950s conveys the crisis of male identity resulting from World War I by way of the femme fatale character. The paper begins with an examination of the traumatic conditions of post-war Weimar that constructed the woman as criminal and double and then proceeds to an analysis of filmic depictions of the femme fatale in Hollywood and Weimar." [Project Muse]

Hankoff, Peter

"Film Noir, Life Noir." Film Comment 12:4 (1976:July/Aug.) 35

Hanson, Philip

"The arc of national confidence and the birth of film noir, 1929-41."
Journal of American Studies, vol. 42, no. 3, pp. 387-414, Dec 2008

"Film noir is a recognized object of historical fascination, but the structures of fascination internal to the films have yet to be analyzed and theorized historically. The work of Maurice Blanchot and Walter Benjamin helps locate the moral and political force of noir as it relates to cinema spectatorship and historical experience as defined by the fascinating image." [Art Index]

"A review of the life and work of film-score composer Miklos Rozsa (1907-1995). Although a composer of serious classical music, Hungarian-born Rozsa turned to film work in order to support himself. He went to work for Alex Korda in London, moving to Los Angeles to complete The Thief of Bagdad when war broke out. There he succeeded in finding the tone of film noir, bringing his European sound to the mean streets. His last film, made in 1981, was Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, which was an explicit throwback to his past film noir triumphs. His other work includes Ben-Hur, King of Kings, Jungle Book, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, The Asphalt Jungle, and Quo Vadis." [Art Abstracts]

House, Rebecca R.

"Night of the Soul: American Film Noir." Studies in Popular Culture, vol. 9 no. 1. 1986. pp: 61-83.

Jameson, Richard T.

"Today: Son of Noir." Film Comment 10:6 (1974:Nov./Dec.) 30

Jancovich, Mark

"Female monsters: Horror, the 'Femme Fatale' and World War II." European Journal of American Culture; 2008, Vol. 27 Issue 2, p133-149, 17p

"Some movies raise mental activity to a higher level of pleasure, even to the extent of an epiphany. These films, which can be termed film blanc, as they are almost a mirror image of film noir, take a lucid but tantalizing approach that reveals only gradually, and never fully, what is happening. By balancing narrative transparency and opacity, film blanc offers the audience the constant pleasure of finding new clues and reshuffling them into new patterns. Major Hollywood releases rarely approach that type of balance, as they need to have broad dramatic appeal as opposed to subtlety if they are to make money. The one Hollywood classic that probably comes closest to blanc is Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, which remains ambiguous to this day." [Art Abstracts]

"Part of a special issue exploring film and video in relation to architecture and urban space. The writer discusses the choice of locations for murder in films set in Los Angeles. There are urban "requirements" for a location where a murder should take place, with a good crime scene identifying poverty as local color for murder. This visual imagery of the decaying inner city has reinforced a Victorian panic about ethnicity and class as well as strengthening illusions about where crime-ridden cities end and safe suburbs start. The noir location thus reflects the perversities of consumer panic as a way to hide urban realities, a paradox that gives noir its presence and power. It seems that key locations for L.A. movie murders require two elements: A nearby consumer monument and a patina that reinforces the false memories of Los Angeles." [Art Index]

"The writer compares two recent American films that explore the film noir genre: L.A. Confidential by Curtis Hanson and Dark City by Alex Proyas. He argues that, as an adaptation of James Ellroy's eponymous book, L.A. Confidential is an intelligent film, but he questions its status as film noir, arguing that the characters' psychology is limited to the point of being caricatural and that, as the only woman, Kim Basinger's character lacks credibility. Meanwhile, he notes, Dark City transcends the notion of a pastiche of the noir genre and mixes noir with elements of a visionary science-fiction film, achieving a splendid originality through a mix of styles, eras, and references." [Art Index]

"The Dark Side Of the Dream: The Image of Los Angeles in Film Noir."
Southern California Quarterly 1987 69(4): 329-348.

"Discusses the film noir genre popular in the 1940's, which portrayed Los Angeles as an impersonal, pessimistic, and dehumanized environment. The writings of James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Horace McCoy, and others were adapted and made into such classic films as Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and The Blue Dahlia. The Spanish architectural styles of residences, the seediness of downtown Los Angeles, exotic landscaping, the river channel, the Hollywood Bowl, and industrial locations were featured in these films and usually given a dark interpretation, as Los Angeles came to represent disillusionment with the American Dream." [America: History and Life]

Lott, Eric.

"The Whiteness of Film Noir." American Literary History v9, n3 (Fall, 1997):542 (25 pages).

"In the 1940's and 1950's American ethnic and nonwhite characters in film noir were racial metaphors for white corruption and symbolic scapegoats for the very criminality they evoked. In response to emerging black, Asian, and Hispanic activism, films such as Double Indemnity and A Double Life compared whites who capitulated to villainous desires with racial and ethnic stereotypes; yet by retaining the idea of respectable morality - the white sinecure - the films' racial codes, embedded in moral discourse and visual cues, vilified criminal acts and sanctioned the very "whiteness" the characters could not maintain. Once domesticated, the racial "Other" inside the white household portended familial dysfunction and reinforced the desirability of the white home that the Other's presence denied." [From ABC-CLIO America: History and Life]

Also in: National imaginaries, American identities: the cultural work of American iconography / edited by Larry J. Reynolds and Gordon Hutner. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, c2000.

"Orientalism in motion pictures portrayed conflict between effeminate Eastern male slaves and their former Western white masters, while film noir explored the dark nature of fantasy while incorporating a similar set of power models. The multiple subject is common to both genres and compels examination of the borders between Self and Other."

Lott, Eric.

"The Whiteness of Film Noir." American Literary History v9, n3 (Fall, 1997):542 (25 pages).

"In the 1940's and 1950's American ethnic and nonwhite characters in film noir were racial metaphors for white corruption and symbolic scapegoats for the very criminality they evoked. In response to emerging black, Asian, and Hispanic activism, films such as Double Indemnity and A Double Life compared whites who capitulated to villainous desires with racial and ethnic stereotypes; yet by retaining the idea of respectable morality - the white sinecure - the films' racial codes, embedded in moral discourse and visual cues, vilified criminal acts and sanctioned the very "whiteness" the characters could not maintain. Once domesticated, the racial "Other" inside the white household portended familial dysfunction and reinforced the desirability of the white home that the Other's presence denied." [From ABC-CLIO America: History and Life]

Also in: National imaginaries, American identities: the cultural work of American iconography / edited by Larry J. Reynolds and Gordon Hutner. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, c2000.

Main Stack E169.1.N3744 2000

Maden, David.

"James M. Cain and the Movies of the Thirties and Forties." Film Heritage, 2:4 (1972 pp 9-25

"The writer examines film gris (gray films), a category of film classified in 1985 by scholar Thom Anderson. Anderson suggested that the most significant achievements of the filmmakers blacklisted in the late 1940s and early 1950s were released between the Hollywood Ten hearings of October 1947 and the resumption of investigations by the House on Un-American Activities in Hollywood in 1951. He identified directors who created a small group of films characterized by a combination of crime and social critique, which he labeled film gris. The writer considers the notion of film gris in relation to two films on the list, Joseph Losey's The Prowler and John Berry's He Ran All the Way (both 1951), focusing on contextual concerns, especially on the backgrounds and political engagements of key creative personnel and of the shifts in the film industry that made it possible, albeit hard, for them to make the films they wanted. He examines the films and the vision of American society they portray, what happened to them and their filmmakers after the films were released, and what the films suggest about the relationship between film gris and film noir." [Art Index]

"Although definition of film noir is imprecise, Hollywood released one large group of films during 1946-49 that are readily classified film noir because all shared a liberal disillusionment with the mass media's portrayal of the nation's post-World War II adjustments. These films also differ from others classed film noir; the others camouflaged criticism of Hollywood's abandoning liberal prescriptions for a better world with extended psychoanalysis of alienated people. These other films also contained so much anti-Communist paranoia as to encourage political repression." [from ABC-CLIO America: History & Life]

"In working to theorize the film noir style, it is important to account for its distinctive chiaroscuro lighting not solely in terms of affect or mood, but as representing a specific kind of optical structure as well as a particular brand of criminal deception. The lighting schemes of the genre frequently resemble medical X-rays, announcing that an X-ray vision is precisely what average people lack, and illustrating noir's overarching investment in a fantasy of public obliviousness. This connection is substantiated by the way in which the mise-en-scene of noir is not broadly illuminated so much as it is shot through with light. The mass popularization of X-ray technology in America in the period between the late 1930s and mid-1950s coincided closely with the rise and decline of classic film noir. Invoking and denying the inside-out viewpoint afforded by the X-ray, noir distinguishes itself as that brand of American crime film that thrills viewers with the promise of a possible secret, not a possible answer." [Art Index]

"The writer explores the complex field of determination in which film noir appeared. A specific U.S. form of nationalist, white/black racism is at work, though not explicitly, in film noir. Film noir's new white man--principally in the person of Humphrey Bogart--was an arresting paradigm of American identity that excluded African-Americans. This new character can be placed in an articulated sequence of socially produced spaces: the chronotopic, representational space of films noirs themselves; the space of postwar U.S. urbanism; the space of postcolonial France and existentialism; and the contemporary space of global capitalism in which Postmodernism has revived and reimagined the noir chronotope for its own purposes. The dialectical unity of these spaces constitutes a contradictory force field in which film noir reveals its racial unconscious." [Art Abstracts]

Naremore, James.

"American Film Noir: The History of an Idea." Film Quarterly v49, n2 (Winter, 1995):12 (17 pages).

"To understand film noir, or to make sense of genres or art-historical categories in general, it must be recognized that film noir belongs to the history of ideas as much as to the history of cinema. It has less to do with a set of artifacts than with a discourse--a loose, evolving system of arguments and interpretations that help to form commercial strategies and aesthetic ideologies. The term film noir currently plays a central part in the vocabulary of playful, commercialized postmodernism. It can describe a dead period, a sentimental yearning for something that never existed, or maybe even a vital tradition, depending on how it is used. The writer comments on early writings about film noir and attempts to explain the paradox that film noir is both an important cinematic legacy and a concept projected onto the past." [Art Abstracts]

"An examination of the characteristic musical scores of 1940s noir films, and of the nostalgic second noir cycle that emerged in the 1970s. The musical scores of 1940s noir films such as Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock, 1943), Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944), and Murder, My Sweet (Edward Dmytryk, 1944) defied the emphasis on tonality common in classical Hollywood scoring practices, reflecting the way in which these noir films represented a challenge to the security of home and family. Scores for the neo-noir cycle of the 1970s and 1980s are characterized by tension between atonal technques and the return of more melodic elements. Neo-noir films such as Body Heat (Lawrence Kasdan, 1981) employ jazz to evoke the exotic undercurrents of the genre and to evoke a sense of nostalgia for the films of the past. The musically "constructed nostalgia" of neo-noir films is unable to find a tonal center in the genre since such a thing did not exist in the first place." [Art Index]

Erotic crime drama, first filmed in the 1940s, is a sub-genre of film noir and influenced films for the next four decades. Sexual desire is central to this sub-genre, with the blockage of that desire resolved within or outside of the law. 'Out of the Past' described a social crisis and constituted a critique of that crisis, while 'Angel Face' and 'Out of the Past - Against All Odds' dealt with the same issues but drifted into melodrama.

Part of a special issue on film genres. The writer discusses genre theory in the context of film noir and post-noir film. He illustrates the difficulties encountered in attempting to apply a generic category or categories to films now seen as film noir by focusing on noir films with particularly similar narrative structures--Out of the Past by Jacques Tourneur (1947) and Angel Face by Otto Preminger (1952)--as well as on Taylor Hackford's remake of Out of the Past--Against All Odds (1984), which was influenced by the noir tradition. He argues that, although all three films fall into the femme fatale narrative type, where the male protagonist is the victim of his desires, Angel Face and Against All Odds drift beyond this category into the generic field of melodrama. Focusing on these films' texts, he goes on to discuss the differences between them as subgenres of the crime film.

Osteen, Mark.

"The Big Secret: Film Noir and Nuclear Fear." Journal of Popular Film and Television v22, n2 (Summer, 1994):79 (12 pages).

"The writer examines the connections between fear of atomic power and film noir. He argues that film noirs, with their pervasive paranoia and fatalism, and their fascination with corruption and cynicism about power, clearly, albeit often indirectly, reflect Americans' nuclear fears. He posits that, especially in those films made after 1949, the cultural fear of annihilation is translated into a fascination with violent death. The psychic split that enabled citizens to relegate nuclear fear to the realm of the unspeakable, he asserts, is powerfully manifest in these films' recurrent motif of secrecy and their frequent symbolic use of deafness, muteness, and silence. Among the films he examines are Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious, Orson Welles's The Lady From Shanghai, Raoul Walsh's White Heat, Rudolph Mate's D.O.A., and Jerry Hopper's The Atomic City." [Art Abstracts]

Osteen, Mark.

"Framed: Forging Identities in Film Noir." Journal of Film and Video
Volume 62, Number 3, Fall 2010 pp. 17-35

"Night in the Capitalist, Cold War City: Noir and the Cultural Politics of Darkness." Left History 1997 5(2): 57-76.

"The dark and disorienting literary and film genre of noir, seen in the paintings of Edward Hopper and the films The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Night and the City (1950), fascinated avant-garde artists through its embrace of alienation and possible remedies. With the rise of the Cold War after World War II, the genre became one of the few politically discreet means of expressing leftist dissent." [From ABC-CLIO America: History and Life]

Pelizzon, V. Penelope, and Nancy West.

""A perfect double down to the last detail": photography and the identity of film noir." Post Script 22.3 (Summer 2003): 34(13).

"Seven film noir writers respond to a number of questions on the cinema. Writers James Crumley, Thierry Jonquet, Jean-Patrick Manchette, Andreu Martin, Jean-Bernard Pouy, Juan Sasturain, and Donald Edwin Westlake answer questions related to the role of cinema in their training, the evolution of the detective genre, the genre as a viable subject matter for the cinema today, and the expectations they have for today's cinema." [Art Abstracts]

The concept that the film noir genre is an effort at catharsis following the trauma that was World War II is disproved by its continuing proliferation. One change that has occurred is the 'caper film' category. This category portrays criminal activities involving an elaborate strategy that through an absurd cosmic twist turns it fatal. At the core is a concerted effort at an anti-social response to social institutions that dehumanize individuals, especially those at the periphery. Classic examples include 'The Asphalt Jungle,' 'The Killers,' 'Criss Cross,' 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Pulp Fiction.'.

"The writer discusses how songs have become increasingly important in modern film. With their added element of lyrical text and because of the psychological undercurrent found in many films noir, songs have been used to foreshadow events, develop themes, further plots, indicate a character's mood, and underscore irony. The songs in the musical scores of the following films are discussed: Someone To Watch Over Me, Sea Of Love, Scarlet Street, Farewell My Lovely, Detour, Out Of The Past, and Blue Velvet." [Art Abstracts]

"Act of Violence (1949) and the Early Films of Fred Zinnemann." In: The films of Fred Zinnemann : critical perspectives / edited by Arthur Nolletti, Jr. Albany : State University of New York Press, c1999.

"Alan Parker's 'Angel Heart' continues the recent film trend of allowing the Devil to carry the day. Parker's film is replete with Satanic symbolism,although the depiction may not be consistent with actual practice. The characterization of Cyphere (Lucifer) as being on higher moral ground than Johnny Favorite/Harry Angel justifies Satan's ultimate victory." [Magazine Index]

Analyses the adaptation of "The Big Clock" from novel to film, in terms of the syntax of film noir.

Schleier, Merrill

"Masculine Heroes, Modernism, and Political Ideology in The Fountainhead and The Big Clock" In: Skyscraper cinema : architecture and gender in American film / Merrill Schleier. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, c2009.

"Part of a special section on sexuality and the city in film. The noir thriller The Big Clock (1948) rehearses aspects of conservative Cold War political discourse through a multitude of architectural tropes and idioms. Pitting its hero (played by Ray Milland) against a homosexually inflected villain (played by Charles Laughton), The Big Clock presents a battle for normative heterosexuality against marginalized homosexuality in an International Style corporate skyscraper office, which serves as a spatial metaphor for the entire U.S.A. The film's spatiality calls for the rooting out of foreign-born homosexual infiltrators or aliens posing as enlightened capitalist entrepreneurs. The Big Clock is typical of film noir's tendency--particularly at the height of the Cold War--to depict marginalized gender variants and homosexual characters as pathological. The film ends with a reassertion of the primacy of heterosexual masculinity and matrimony, while simultaneously liberating capitalist skyscraper space from decadent homosexual infiltrators." [Art Index]

Telotte, J.P.

"The Big Clock of Film Noir." Film Criticism, XIV/2, Winter 89-90; p.1-11.

"Professional Investigators and Femmes Fatales in Neo-Noir." In: Hollywood heroines : women in film noir and the female gothic film / by Helen Hanson.
p. 158
London ; New York : I.B. Tauris : In the United States and Canada distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

"They Turned a School Into a Jungle! How The Blackboard Jungle Redefined the Education Crisis in Postwar America." Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies
Volume 39.1 (Spring 2009) pp. 21-30

Director Martin Scorsese's films have always dealt with the seamier and violent aspects of life on the edge. His new movie, 'Cape Fear,' is a remake of the 1962 classic that has an ex-con terrorizing the family of the lawyer who sent him to prison.

"Martin Scorsese's 'Cape Fear' and Barbra Streisand's 'The Prince of Tides' are both set in the south with violence being a common theme. The violence these films portray, however, is not isolated in the southern locales. What is made apparent by both films is the link between the violent psyche of Americans and the deep south existing in the collective unconscious of the film industry. The difference between Scorsese and Streisand is basically rooted in the male and female attitudes toward violence." [Magazine Index]

"Martin Scorsese's remake of 'Cape Fear' portrays an attorney's struggle with his own hypocrisy. Attorney Sam Bowden is 'tried' by a former client, Max Cady. Bowden suppressed evidence which might have exonerated Cady. Nick Nolte's performance as Bowden explores the 'lawyer mask', which some practitioners hide behind, espousing ethics and objectivity in professional life, but not living up to these codes in personal life." [Magazine Index]

Films which cater to the fears of the upper middle class have been very successful recently. While not billed as horror films, these three focus on the manipulation of yuppies' fear of crime and realistically portray a violent world that is growing scarier than fiction.

Film director Martin Scorsese has been exploring the soul of America since his 1973 film 'Mean Streets.' Scorsese's films depict violence and sexuality in a culture obsessed with images in the media. 'Cape Fear,' Scorsese's most recent film, is discussed in relation to his earlier works.

Wilson, Robert Rawdon.

"Graffiti Become Terror: The Idea of Resistance." Canadian Review of Comparative Literature-Revue Canadienne de Litterature-Comparee, 1995 June, 22:2, 267-85.

"Real American history": Crossfire and the increasing invisibility of gay men in the Cold War era." In: Homosexuality in Cold War America: resistance and the crisis of masculinity / Robert J. Corber. p. 79-104. Durham [N.C.]: Duke University Press, 1997. New Americanists.

Main Stack HQ76.3.U5.C65 1997

Fox, Darryl

"Crossfire" and "Huac": Surviving the Slings and Arrows of the Committee."
Film History, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1989), pp. 29-37

"Detecting Difference in Devil in a Blue Dress: The Mulatta Figure, Noir, and the Cinematic Reification of Race." In: Mixed race Hollywood / edited by Mary Beltrán and Camilla Fojas.
New York : New York University Press, c2008.

"Carl Franklin's film Devil in a Blue Dress (1995) is discussed. The filmdevelops out of Los Angeles film-noir history in its use of, among othernoir conventions, Los Angeles as a setting in which investigationalnarratives occur. In the film, Los Angeles serves as a quintessential"American" space in which cultural anxieties about race, gender, andracial purity are contained, examined, and exploded. Set in 1948, the filmfocuses on crime, corruption, and strained social bonds, depicting aportion of Los Angeles culture that, because it lacks moral light, isconsidered, metaphorically, to be "dark." The film interrogates the verydarkness that is central to this metaphor while also exploring theracialized equation of criminality and darkness-blackness using a plot thatconcentrates on questions regarding racialized social relations." [Art Index]

"An analysis of contemporary manifestations of film noir. Carl Franklin's Devil in a Blue Dress is revisionist noir. To the extent that it has a "happy" ending and features dreamily amber cinematography, Devil qualifies as a high-class Hollywood addition to 1990s noir, an adjunct to rather than a member of Neo noir. The film reprises the heady, atmospheric tunes of early classic noir, whereas Neo Noir of the 1990s looks for its inspiration to the psychotic years of late noir (already tinged with parody and subversion). Devil focuses on a drama of good and evil, believing that something momentous hangs in the balance, and rejecting the casual nihilism that otherwise tends to accompany the Neo noir project. The representation of women in both noir and Neo Noir is also discussed." [Art Abstracts]

"A review of Carl Franklin's film Devil in a Blue Dress (1995). Adapted from Walter Mosley's novel, this film tells the story of an unemployed black man who becomes a private detective when a friend introduces him to a curious individual who is looking for a missing woman. The film, which explores racial problems in 1940s America, has a certain atmosphere, but the director's desire to revive the film noir genre while changing its rules does not work.

"The racial-spatial order and the law : Devil in a blue dress." In: Law on the screen / edited by Austin Sarat, Lawrence Douglas, Martha Merrill Umphrey. Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2005.

Discusses three films, all based on Raymond Chandler's novel, Farewell, My Lovely, and all part of the film style called film noir; the films are: The Falcon Takes Over (1942), Murder My Sweet (1944), and Farewell, My Lovely (1975).

"This essay employs psychoanalytic theory to identify a fetishistic imperative in the perfect crime that Walter Neff endeavors to commit in Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity. By favoring ongoing manipulation over goal attainment and satisfaction, Walter Neff engages in a virtuoso cover-up that represents a paradigmatic noir deception, inviting viewers to fantasize that there may always be "more than meets the eye."" [Project Muse]

Pelizzon, V. Penelope;
West, Nancy Martha

"Multiple Indemnity: Film Noir, James M. Cain, and Adaptations of a Tabloid Case."
Narrative Volume 13, Number 3, October 2005, pp. 211-237

Focuses on film noirs as a kind of filmmaking and a cinematic style with recognizable features. Expressionistic techniques in crime movies; Entry of Columbia Pictures in the noir market; Noir elements in Columbia's films; Eclectic approach of Columbia to noir; `Gilda' as a specific kind of women's film; `In a Lonely Place' as Columbia's best noir.

" White heterosexual obsession is well documented in film noir as a reaction to the alienation and cynicism resulting from the perceived collapse of the urban city and society as a whole. The author recognizes a repressed homosexual desire in Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (1956). The author identifies a "revenge of the repressed" present in the movie. If film noir's linchpin is that of alienation and fatalism in its protagonists' worlds, then the homosexuality present in the movie (to say nothing of the gambling, violence, and adultery) is the embodiment of Wood's monster. Furthermore, the author argues that the fatalistic results and violence that culminate in The Killing are a result of the protagonists' not acting upon their homosexual desires. In other words, if Wood views the horror film's repression of sexuality as the precursor for the depravity of the Monster, then the author posits just the opposite. The fact that The Killing's protagonists do not act upon their desires ultimately leads to their fall." [Communications Abstracts]

Darke, Chris and Tunney, Tom

"The Kubrick Connection." Sight & Sound, V/11, Nov 95; p.22-25,55.

Pierre-William Glenn discusses "The killing" as a model of film noir and how he used it in the preparation of his own film "23h58".

The concept that the film noir genre is an effort at catharsis following the trauma that was World War II is disproved by its continuing proliferation. One change that has occurred is the 'caper film' category. This category portrays criminal activities involving an elaborate strategy that through an absurd cosmic twist turns it fatal. At the core is a concerted effort at an anti-social response to social institutions that dehumanize individuals, especially those at the periphery. Classic examples include 'The Asphalt Jungle,' 'The Killers,' 'Criss Cross,' 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Pulp Fiction.'.

"A review of L.A. Confidential, directed by Curtis Hanson. Instead of relying on the usual suspects of what goes by the name of film noir in today's movie culture, the film revisits the early 1950s and two intertwined but often overlooked branches of that genre's family: the saga of the rogue cop and the expose of municipal corruption. With the requisite glut of senseless mayhem, it also insists on self-recognition and the grim reciprocity between personal and institutional practices of violence. Equally important, Los Angeles is used not simply as a setting but a mindset, an urban mythology embossed with the false promise of endless opportunity and filtered by the false projections of the Hollywood dream factory. The film is deadly serious about its historical background in film noir, and, although there are unmistakably conservative values embedded in its line of critique and a lack of overall thematic coherence, it is an ambitious agenda for a commercial action! movie by current standards." [Art Abstracts]

"A review of L.A. Confidential, a film by Curtis Harrison. With discretion and finesse, this film evokes the Los Angeles of the 1950s, focusing on the lives of three cops who have very different preoccupations and working methods. Its explicit references to three films demonstrate its claim to be simultaneously a film noir, a love story, and a film about Hollywood. It is the latter that is most fascinating; while nothing or almost nothing is shown of the film industry proper, all the characters gravitate toward a world where everything is dictated and engendered by the "dream factory." The real subject of the film is thus the contamination by Hollywood." [Art Abstracts]

"'Off the record, on the QT and very hush-hush' - L.A.Confidential (1997)." In: Crime wave: the filmgoers' guide to the great crime movies / Howard Hughes.
London ; New York : I.B. Tauris ; New York : Distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

"Film (and song) noir when shadows are lighter; a genre known for its haunting women takes a different path." (problems with Kim Basinger's character in film, 'L.A. Confidential,' and with singer Carly Simon's... New York Times v147, n279 (Mon, Oct 6, 1997):B2(N), E2(L), col 3, 19 col in.

"The writer compares two recent American films that explore the film noir genre: L.A. Confidential by Curtis Hanson and Dark City by Alex Proyas. He argues that, as an adaptation of James Ellroy's eponymous book, L.A. Confidential is an intelligent film, but he questions its status as film noir, arguing that the characters' psychology is limited to the point of being caricatural and that, as the only woman, Kim Basinger's character lacks credibility. Meanwhile, he notes, Dark City transcends the notion of a pastiche of the noir genre and mixes noir with elements of a visionary science-fiction film, achieving a splendid originality through a mix of styles, eras, and references." [Art Abstracts]

"The work of cinematographer Dante Spinotti on director Curtis Hanson's movie L.A. Confidential is examined. Based on James Ellroy's novel of ambition and corruption gone awry, this film noir, set in 1953, centers on three Los Angeles police detectives involved in a murder investigation. Hanson and Spinotti wished to avoid telling the story through a lens of nostalgia, choosing to foreground the action and emotion rather than the period. For the look of the film, which was shot in Super 35 using mostly 200 ASA 5293 stock, they were inspired by the work of still photographer Robert Frank, whose 1950s photographs were of the period yet had a contemporary look and feel. Spinotti thus composed each shot as if he were using a still camera." [Art Abstracts]

"Entrepreneurs and 'Family Values' in the Postwar Film." In: Authority and Transgression in Literature and Film / edited by Bonnie Braendlin and Hans Braendlin. pp: 89-102 Gainesville; University Press of Florida, c1996.

"Taking tips and losing class: challenging the service economy in James M. Cain's Mildred Pierce." In: The novel and the American left : critical essays on depression-era fiction / edited by Janet Galligani Casey.
Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, c2004.

Main Stack PS228.C6.N68 2004

Cook, Pam. "Duplicity in Mildred Pierce."

In: Screening the past : memory and nostalgia in cinema / London ; New York : Routledge, 2005.

Compares 'Mildred Pierce' and 'The Three Faces of Eve,' two post-World War II films that feature housewives as main characters. Representations of women at home in Hollywood films of the 1940s and 1950s; Definitions of melodrama; Realization of female identity outside the world of work; Transformations in the figure of the housewife that occurred during this period.

McHugh, K. A.

"The labor of maternal melodramas: converting angels to icons." In: American domesticity : from how-to manual to Hollywood melodrama / Kathleen Anne McHugh. New York : Oxford University Press, 1999.

"Feminist Film Theory: Mildred Pierce and the Second World War." In: Female Spectators: Looking at Film and Television. London / edited by E. Deidre Pribram. pp: 12-30. London; New York: Verso, 1988. Questions for feminism.

Discusses the relationship between the novels by author Raymond Chandler and Hollywood films of the Production Code era adapted from them. Information on the censorship of the film adaptation of the novels; Features of Chandler's novels; Details on the film "Murder, My Sweet" and the film version of book "The Big Sleep."

"The American origins of film noir : realism in urban art and The naked city." In: Looking past the screen : case studies in American film history and method / edited by Jon Lewis and Eric Smoodin.
Durham : Duke University Press, 2007.

"Out of the Light: An Analysis of Narrative in Out of the Past." Journal of American Studies, vol. 18 no. 1. 1984 Apr. pp: 73-87.

Jarvie, Ian A.

"Knowledge, Morality, and Tragedy in The Killers and Out of the Past ."
In: The philosophy of film noir Edited by Mark T. Conard ; foreword by Robert Porfirio. Lexington : University Press of Kentucky, c2006.

"Out of the past a.k.a. build my gallows high."
In: The Book of film noir / edited by Ian Cameron.
Place/Publisher New York : Continuum, c1993.

Moffitt PN1995.9.F54.B66 1993

PFA : PN1995.9.F54 M68 1992

Jarvie, Ian.

"Knowledge, Morality, and Tragedy in The Killers and Out of the Past." In: The philosophy of film noir
Edited by Mark T. Conard ; foreword by Robert Porfirio. Lexington : University Press of Kentucky, c2006.

Main Stack PN1995.9.F54.P55 2006

Luhr, William.

"Border crossings in Out of the Past and L.A. Confidential." Bilingual Review/La revista bilingue (Arizona State Univ. at Tempe) (23:3) 1998, 230-6. (1998)

"Genre Theory in the Context of the Noir and Post-noir Film." Film Criticism v22, n1 (Fall, 1997):21 (17 pages).

Erotic crime drama, first filmed in the 1940s, is a sub-genre of film noir and influenced films for the next four decades. Sexual desire is central to this sub-genre, with the blockage of that desire resolved within or outside of the law. 'Out of the Past' described a social crisis and constituted a critique of that crisis, while 'Angel Face' and 'Out of the Past - Against All Odds' dealt with the same issues but drifted into melodrama.

Part of a special issue on film genres. The writer discusses genre theory in the context of film noir and post-noir film. He illustrates the difficulties encountered in attempting to apply a generic category or categories to films now seen as film noir by focusing on noir films with particularly similar narrative structures--Out of the Past by Jacques Tourneur (1947) and Angel Face by Otto Preminger (1952)--as well as on Taylor Hackford's remake of Out of the Past--Against All Odds (1984), which was influenced by the noir tradition. He argues that, although all three films fall into the femme fatale narrative type, where the male protagonist is the victim of his desires, Angel Face and Against All Odds drift beyond this category into the generic field of melodrama. Focusing on these films' texts, he goes on to discuss the differences between them as subgenres of the crime film.

Erotic crime drama, first filmed in the 1940s, is a sub-genre of film noir and influenced films for the next four decades. Sexual desire is central to this sub-genre, with the blockage of that desire resolved within or outside of the law. 'Out of the Past' described a social crisis and constituted a critique of that crisis, while 'Angel Face' and 'Out of the Past - Against All Odds' dealt with the same issues but drifted into melodrama.

Part of a special issue on film genres. The writer discusses genre theory in the context of film noir and post-noir film. He illustrates the difficulties encountered in attempting to apply a generic category or categories to films now seen as film noir by focusing on noir films with particularly similar narrative structures--Out of the Past by Jacques Tourneur (1947) and Angel Face by Otto Preminger (1952)--as well as on Taylor Hackford's remake of Out of the Past--Against All Odds (1984), which was influenced by the noir tradition. He argues that, although all three films fall into the femme fatale narrative type, where the male protagonist is the victim of his desires, Angel Face and Against All Odds drift beyond this category into the generic field of melodrama. Focusing on these films' texts, he goes on to discuss the differences between them as subgenres of the crime film.

"The screenplay for director Jacques Tourneur's classic Out of the Past (1947) was worked on by three different writers before reaching its final form. Daniel Mainwaring, who wrote the film's source novel under the pseudonym Geoffrey Homes, was the first to complete a draft of the screenplay. His draft sticks closely to the novel, maintaining the cliched toughness of its tone. James M. Cain, called in to rewrite Mainwaring's version, added several plot elements and a happy ending, all of which were discarded. Cain's second draft introduced the two-part structure that the film would ultimately employ--the first part consisting of a flashback about the hero's past and the second part continuing in the present. The final draft was by Frank Fenton, who contributed most of the film's best dialogue and many key plot elements and who rounded out the characters. Unfortunately, Fenton received no screen credit for his excellent work." [Art Abstracts]

Telotte, J. P.

"The Woman in the Door: Framing Presence in Film Noir." In: In the Eye of the Beholder: Critical Perspectives in Popular Film and Television / edited by Gary R. Edgerton, Michael T. Marsden, and Jack Nachbar. pp: 137-48. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, c1997.

Sam Fuller : film is a battleground : a critical study, with interviews, a filmography, and a bibliography Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland, c1994.

MAIN: PN1998.3.F85 S47 1994

Shadoian, Jack.

"Focus on Feeling: 'Seeing' through the Fifties: Pick Up on South Street (1953)." In: Dreams & dead ends : the American gangster film / Jack Shadoian.
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2003.

"The writer examines film noir and "hard-boiled" fiction as an expression of specific developments within the naturalist tradition, focusing on film adaptations of James M. Cain's novels The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, and on American remakes and adaptations of them. These novels, he explains, are based on a causal relationship between sexual desire and criminal activity, a formula that has been popular with naturalist writers since Emile Zola. He goes on to discuss Tay Garnett's 1946 adaptation of Postman, Bob Rafelson's 1981 adaptation of the same novel, Billy Wilder's 1944 adaptation of Double Indemnity, and Lawrence Kasdan's 1981 remake of it, Body Heat, exploring the degree to which they signal either transformations in naturalism or a move away from this tradition. He concludes that the naturalist tradition has all but disappeared from the erotic crime film, a subgenre that once offered an essential critique of the American dream." [Art Index]

"A review of the video release of The Usual Suspects, a film by Bryan Singer. The film, which concerns a gang of five criminals, is essentially a flashback after four of the five have supposedly been killed in a grand heist. Unlike recent film noir remakes and dark thrillers that center on the gangsters' casual coolness, this film focuses more on the conventions of the genre. However, the film relies too much on the willingness of the audience to fall for gimmicks and extended red herrings, and Singer's suspects are merely empty parodies of classic film noir heroes and villains." [Art Abstracts]

"Literary critic Slavoj Zizek felt the film noir genre reached its peak when it fused with the detective genre. The movie 'The Usual Suspects' both evokes and undermines the modernist epistemology particular to film noir. The alienation characteristic of the film noir hero was exposed by Jean Baudrillard as an illusion." [Expanded Academic Index]

Telotte, J.P.

"Rounding up The Usual Suspects: The Comforts of Character and Neo-Noir." (a look at the unconventional neo-noir film 'The Usual Suspects') Film Quarterly v51, n4 (Summer, 1998):12 (9 pages).

'The Usual Suspects,' a so-called 'neo-noir' film, makes itsimpact by subverting the ordinary course of classical narrative in motion pictures. It accomplishes this by its use of unconventional and complex characters that defy predictability. The criticism of critics David Bordwell, W.R. Robinson and Vivian Sobchack is explored." [Expanded Academic Index]

"Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects challenges classic norms of cinema, particularly the impact of character in the neo-noir. The film begins with a mystery that totally relies on the film's conception of character, which is a set of reactions that contradicts the audience's anticipation of narrative conservatism and undermines one sort of pleasure or comfort that the audience has come to expect from films. Instead, the movie offers a very different interpretation of character, one that reinforces the very real nature of character that truly represents the current era's noir." [Art Abstracts]

"'Made it Ma! Top of the world!' - White Heat (1949)." In: Crime wave: the filmgoers' guide to the great crime movies / Howard Hughes.
London ; New York : I.B. Tauris ; New York : Distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.